Illusions For The Non Believer
by wikiaddicted723
Summary: Olivia doesn't know what to think. To Peter, on the other hand, the possibilities are endless. Post 4x21 & 4x22 possibly goes AU .


A/N: written as a kink meme fill. CHILDREN KEEP AWAY. Let me know what you thought ;D

* * *

"I will write in words of fire. I will write them on your skin. I will write about desire, write beginnings, write of sin. You're the book I love the best, your skin only holds my truth, you will be a palimpsest, lines of age rewriting youth. You will not burn upon the pyre, or be buried on the shelf. You're my letter to desire: and you'll never read yourself. I will trace each word and comma as the final talk descends. You're my tale of dreams and dreams, let us find out how it ends." - Neil Gaiman.

* * *

"I don't mind, you know?" his voice is rough as he whispers, his fingers running aimlessly on the smooth flesh of her naked back, occasionally dipping down below her scapula to caress the still-pink tissue of the only scar that mars the pale expanse of her lightly freckled flesh, marking the exit point of the bullet that ended her life – briefly – just a week ago. A bullet that now sits on her nightstand on a silver chain, where he put it the moment she was allowed to come home from the hospital, four days ago.

Olivia doesn't even ask what he's referring to. It's all she has been able to think about, since she woke up. She guesses that probably means he's thought of it too.

That it keeps happening when neither of them is expecting it is probably not helping.

And how could he _not_ be thinking about the fact that she can control his very motion, the way a puppeteer does its marionette, not so much weaseling her way through the high walls around his mind as bashing through them all in a spectacle of monstrous capacity to eclipse everything they've seen. How could he not think about it, when all she has to do is think of him and let him fill her mind by accident as she does something, and what should remain a simple electrical impulse running through her neuronal network, before going to die in the back of her mind, becomes his reality.

More than once she's found him with that puzzled look on his face as she turns around to the sound of a tentative "Olivia", his hands still trapped in whatever task she had been about to perform with hers (she's learned she doesn't need to make the motions herself), his posture too straight and tense to even resemble his own elegant slouch. Peter never says anything else, let's his eyes – orbs riddled to the brim with puzzles and paradoxes and labyrinths of shadows and mischief – speak for him of lack of doubt, every look a question without an answer that he cares for, except the one he always asks: _are you alright?_

Olivia turns to face him from her facedown position, mirroring his naked shape as they lie on their sides amidst her sheets, his arms coming around to more properly hug her to his body in a loose embrace. The dead weight of his arms is comforting, and the light friction of the soft hair on his calves against the smooth skin of her own as she weaves her leg between his feels like home.

Still, she frowns at his words.

_She_ minds, after all. It can't be pleasant, to have your limbs hijacked into actions you had not thought to perform. Olivia doesn't want him to lie, just to spare her for a moment from a truth that seems as obvious now as it was when she first had the thought: she's just too much of a freak, and there is nothing to be done about it. The bullet on her nightstand – her presence here, alive – is just further proof of the fact.

"I mean that, Olivia," Peter adds, seeing her face. Guessing, from the look in her eyes, the path her thoughts have strayed on, "it's not as bad as you make it seem."

His words are met with a humorless chuckle, and her reticence to look anywhere above his chin. They have discussed this – attempted to, at least, but she still can't shake the thought from her mind, that some things are meant to stay dormant, some realms unperturbed in the vastness of the human mind. She wants it out.

There is a reason these 'abilities' Bell had so treasured in her could only be made available through child abuse of the first order. They had never beaten her, or treated her wrong, never raised their voices against her, or shown violence of any sort, and if they had she doesn't remember. But Olivia has got the rest of her messed up excuse of a life to make up for kind words and soft touches. There's a history of blood on her hands, of a rage in her veins that does not belong, and of power. Power she can't even begin to describe, or imagine. Power she wants no part of.

"I never wanted any of this," she says, though it's futile.

She wants a lifetime on this bed, in his arms. A lifetime of his voice and his eyes and his hands, of his laughter and his smile. Above all she wants what little peace she can get, if only for the length of a breath or a beat of his heart. But the world has never asked for her wants, her desires, and has done even less to help her endeavors.

What she wants doesn't matter.

Peter smiles that small smile, the one he reserves for moments like this, of vulnerable exposure at three a.m. on a Saturday, when the world outside has been put away, hidden behind the bolt and lock of her door, when her every worry surfaces from the deep sea of her resolute strength. It's hers, she knows, that smile.

He rubs his hand down her arm, locks her fingers with his to bring them up to his mouth. He kisses each knuckle, and traps the hand against the warmth of his chest, where his heart works relentless beneath layers and layers of thin blood and flesh.

This is the thing she loves about him, about them – one of the things, at least: that she can say anything, anything at all, and he'll be there to listen with a patient smile and sparkling eyes. He is her best friend, first and foremost, sharing their lives a reflex, more than a conscious decision. Sharing a bed comes more as an afterthought now, a thing devised as physical translation to their synchrony of thought, a way for pleasure, one more variation of the intimacy that defines them and extends to fill what space remains in the sub-atomic vacuum between them.

"Well," he says, and she knows by the sarcastic lilt of his voice that he's about to say something contrary, " _I _never wanted to be dragged ass-first back to Boston four years ago, never mind that the most gorgeous FBI agent did the dragging, and yet here we are, a timeline an two universes later…"

His grin widens and the lines around his eyes deepen and she's too focused on the dancing light around the slate blue of his irises to protest on his choice of words or the fact that they both know there's no comparison. It's meant as a distraction, a way for him to gather his thoughts when he can't find meaningful words to drop in her ear, an occurrence rare onto itself but not altogether unmanageable.

It's one more thing that makes Peter, Peter. His need to deflect and evade and push sideways at half-strength instead, in the exceptionally scarce situations that render his intellect mute.

"I'm going to have to thank her then, that agent…" she says, playing along, wanting to forget, if only for a moment, all the hardships that followed. All the pain and the blood and the salt of the tears that brought them here and now.

Peter blinks then, and she knows he's caught her mood. He reopens his eyes at half-mast, looking at her from under too-long lashes and, by the way his hands wander, she can tell the direction he's willing to take them. She smiles and bites her lip from the inside, looking back down at her hand on his chest.

Olivia expects him to move, roll them over and continue what they started hours ago, after dinner. She definitely does not expect his following statement.

"You could try it now," he says, his voice low, it's almost-tentative quality discarded by the way he meets her gaze head on with a smoldering expression, "If you want," he adds.

She gapes at him, is all she does.

"What? Now? You – you want me to…" his finger on her lips stills her words, but her thoughts run away from his grasp. She's not sorry she used it, used him, to fight Jones, to save his life. But it's one thing to surrender to instinct in the urgency of the moment, when fear for him threatened to burn her alive, and another altogether to consciously invade his body, his mind, for her own personal gratification. She wants _him_, and everything that implies, not a puppet or a slave.

"It's still going to be you and me, Liv," he says, rubbing his nose against hers, "just…think on it, perfect timing, no fumbling, record accuracy, not to mention the certainty of a mind numbing orgasm courtesy of _moi_ and this well toned body of mine." He has the audacity to wink, at the end.

Olivia laughs and laughs, and feels his self-satisfaction like an outward presence in the room, his shit-eating grin against her breastbone apparent as she rolls onto her back in an attempt at regaining her breath, his torso – still yellowish green in places here and there – following hers. It's not so much his words that are cause of hilarity as much as the normalcy this whole situation. When was it that bat-shit crazy became their new norm? Had it always been so, she wonders.

"I don't think there's been a problem with getting any of those, do you?" She asks with a smile as her laughter recedes.

"You and I remember things differently then, since I'm pretty sure I banged my head pretty hard against this headboard of hell the other day. Right. Here." he slaps his hand against the dark wood, if only for emphasis.

"It's not my fault you miscalculated," she raises her eyebrows, looking at him through her eyelashes, full on teasing him now, "I'm a lot more flexible than I look."

"Oh, I know," he says, his voice a growl against her skin as he drags his teeth lightly over her sternum, right down to its end, just below her breasts.

Olivia takes his head in her hands, long fingers slayed over the scruff on his cheeks, the edge of his ears, the arch of his cheekbones. She stops his downward momentum, pulls him back for a kiss, a tug of his lips between hers, a brush of her tongue against his. All the while thinking, thinking, thinking.

"Okay," she says, and it's merely a breath hanging between them.

His hand is warm against her head, his fingers weaving themselves between strands of her hair, "Okay?"

"I'll try it," she whispers, rolling them over so he lies flat on his back, resting her forehead against his and closing her eyes, focusing on him, on them, until the world around disappears.

Suddenly, she's expanding, flooding him and running down his every nerve with blazing warmth that holds him immobile, sitting up on her bed with her hips firm on his lap. It feels the same way stretching a rarely used muscle does; a tinge of discomfort, a whole lot of strangeness. Olivia experiments: she starts with his fingers, small movements against her skin, a slight change in position, angle, pressure. She makes her way up from there, to his neck and his face, to his lips and the warm caress of his tongue on her flesh. And then she goes _down._

By the time she's really ready to get started with him – when she's more or less figured out the finer points of her control, Peter's a mess of quivering limbs, every surface of his body drenched in sweat, every nerve raw and overexposed, his very breathing a chore.

"You ok?" she asks, diminishing her influence to a nudge while he struggles to pull air down his nostrils and the raw desert of his throat, finally opening her eyes to lock them with his. She sighs in relief, finding him there, behind that look, just as always.

"Yeah," he says, groggy, "just give me a minute." She nods, and feels his lips on her shoulder as he sags into her, his wet hair running smoothly between her fingers as she lightly massages his scalp.

"What does it feel like?" she asks, more curious than worried by now.

"It's …interesting, like I'm a voyeur standing outside, watching my own body. It feels warm mostly," _but not bad _he thinks loudly, pushing towards her. She blinks at that, but she guesses it shouldn't be very surprising. Every door works both ways, after all.

"You really up to this?" Olivia has to ask.

"Up?" he grins, "I don't know, should we find out?" he pushes his hips sharp into hers then, and she feels his cock nudge at the very top of her thigh, a little off target. Oh, he's up to it alright.

"Not really what I meant," she says, biting the edge of his ear as she leaves him immobile in mock-reprimand for his juvenile humor. Denying, as always, that she's grown fond of it over time.

"Well then, your wish is my command and all that – " he grunts, and she sinks onto him with a sigh and the rest is a blur.

She touches his chest, and finds his hands on her breasts. She holds him tighter to her and he turns them around, her back between the mattress and his chest. She sighs, licks her lips, and his mouth is on hers. And always, always his hips push against hers in this private dance, old as time, old as sin and older still. Her mind is fuzzy, muddled, her influence reduced to a minor compulsion that he's chosen to follow.

Olivia directs his hand to her knee, rests her leg in the raised crook of his arm as the other presses tight against his spine, giving him better access, a wider angle, dragging him ever closer as they move together, ignited like burning barns and crumbling into ash, raw wounds splitting at the seams.

All the while he's been looking at her, paying attention to the pushes and the pulls, memorizing rhythm and direction, pressure and tilt, and Olivia finally understands why he wanted this. There's a look in his eyes, beneath the fire that long ago burned the forest of her loneliness down. It asks of her, demands: _what else, what else? _Like there's anything left that he still has not given her. Something he might have missed, something he might not have though to surrender.

She pulls him down, kisses him hard. What can she say to that, other than shake her head and smile? He has given her everything he has, everything he is.

Peter comes first, shuddering against her, his mouth on her breast as she clutches at his hair tight enough to hurt, the way she knows he's always liked.

"Sorry," he mutters, his speech slurry, tongue dragging against the roof of his mouth in exhaustion. Olivia clenches against him, rubs his cheek with her hand; it's quite all right, she doesn't say. She can take care of herself, and he's still hard between her thighs. That has never been the point, after all.

"Sleep," is all she says, and he does, in her arms. She doesn't want him to leave them, that's all she wants.


End file.
